Good day everybody! I've been a lurker for a while now, until I attempted to use makou reactor myself haha. Well I was trying to swap cloud's model with aerith's along with their animation. Considering the enormous amount of fields on the flevel.lgp, this can take hours to finish. Well I almost finished it actually, until the makou reactor stopped working and closed!!

Is there something easier to achieve this? Or is there someone who already made the edited flevel.lgp by any chance? Thanks in advance!

This is why it's always important to regularly save your progress, you should also make sure that Makou has the permissions to make changes to files currently sitting in the Program Folders too.

There are two main methods for changing a field model:

1) The method you started on is the most thorough and results in the character having the correct animations, etc. It also entails the largest amount of work because not only does every field need to be changed but a lot of scenes will play animations partially (as in, a limited number of frames) which can result in some odd gestures if they're replaced. There's also situations where you won't have an appropriate animation to make use of; Cloud has a lot of unique ones, such as jumping off the train at the start of the game and many others that can't be easily replicated by the other characters. In those cases, a subtle edit of the actual scene to avoid these animations being required at all is probably the most time-efficient way (making an actual new animation file for it may require hours of work in itself).

2) Making a 'body-double' tends to be a 'clean' way of swapping a character and is basically jury-rigging the desired character's parts onto Cloud's field models, but this means the new character will be using Cloud's animations which won't be as true to the original character. This is especially unsuitable if swapping in a female character, or anything that has a strange skeleton (Red XIII for instance). Body doubles have the advantage of requiring less work, but are only suitable in certain circumstances. It also requires Kimera and a decompiler for the char.lgp.

One thing about Aeris though is that she can use the animations from the following characters:-) Sephiroth-) Tseng-) Reno-) Hojo

I really learnt that lesson the hard way . I just wasted hours of work but really, most of the animations I just replaced it with Aerith's standing animation. The only things that I replaced properly were nodding, looking left and right (which can also means saying "no" so I used the same one), jumping, climbing, startled, and the one when you have to press the button simultaneously with Tifa and Barret early in the game. And I noticed on the mountain (the one from the flashback in Kalm when you have Sephiroth in your party) there are 2 aaaa.hrc .

I actually used the second method to swap Cloud with Aerith back then, but yes her running animation alone is not fitting. Plus her hair, when she looks up her hair sticks out on the stomach.. That's why I swapped Cloud with Yuffie cause Yuffie has short hair, but her hands are almost always dislocated when she plays Cloud's animation. Oh well so it turns out only these two methods exist.. I'll have to start over again then haha. I'm still angry lol.

It sucks to lose progress; this might help you get back into it, this file contains my own notes that I used for the NT Mod. It lists a bunch of Aeris' animations. It's buy no means a complete listing, and the descriptions might be a bit cryptic because they were for personal reference (I sometimes named an animation based on the scene it appeared in or the line of dialogue it accompanied) but might be handy nonetheless: http://www.mediafire.com/view/6asd1onyktkdt8l/Aeris_Anim.txt

Wow thank you very much! I have my own notes, but it's so untidy and made the job longer than it has to. Oh and our style of naming are the same lol (I named one animation as "similar to "Those Words!" animation by Rinoa" lol also named some of them with my mother language). "we're gonna go play.." is on point hahah.

I myself didn't think that Tseng and Reno have the same skeleton as Aerith. Sephiroth has long hair and Hojo has the gown so it'd make sense, but why those two haha.

Also I decided to continue and worked nonstop for my Aerith game, and woohoo!! After 6 long hours of nonstop flevel editing, it's finally finished TT. Oh God the only thing I'm doing is replacing field character model. I can't imagine how long it takes for other people here who releases great mods such as NT mod! I'm even more thankful now TT.

Can some one make a list which character has the same skeleton? I have started to add at my list a comment for the used skeleton (C for Cloud, B for Barrett, etc.).

I've been meaning to type up my notes for a while now, could pool them together when they're finished? A big 'resources' folder that contains info like this (and other stuff) could be handy for people, have it all centralised sort of thing.

I myself didn't think that Tseng and Reno have the same skeleton as Aerith. Sephiroth has long hair and Hojo has the gown so it'd make sense, but why those two haha.

Also I decided to continue and worked nonstop for my Aerith game, and woohoo!! After 6 long hours of nonstop flevel editing, it's finally finished TT.

6 hours is quite fast considering there's 5-600+ field screens and most of them have Cloud in them. Next thing you'll be wanting to do is editing the dialogue and maybe making some subtle alterations to certain scenes. For text, it's not enough that you change the actual text itself but you also have to take care of the dialogue box size as well. Fortunately, Makou can auto-correct the size of the text box if it's too small; the trick is locating the dialogue in the field script in the first place (you're looking for the command 'Create/Re-Size Text Window #', usually appears above the dialogue itself).

Here's something to keep in mind though. The early fields in Midgar (particularly the Reactor and Sector 7) have the annoying habit of being all over the place, and will place the Dialogue Box size line separately from the actual dialogue itself (usually separated by a few lines). To resize it properly, shunt the Dialogue Box size down until it's directly above the dialogue itself, re-size it, then move it back to where you found it.

And I reckon you'll be wanting to swap Cloud's battle model for Aeris at some point too, and their portrait in menus (as well as World Map, mini-games etc.) All these can be done with other tools, but one step at a time I guess.

I guess it was quicker because I replace most of Cloud's animation with Aerith's standing animation. I expected Aerith to be very very stiff in cutscenes, but it turns she's not as stiff as I thought. That's how great the game is I guess, the cutscenes on FF7 are made so well that even if most of the main character's animations are deleted, it's still enjoyable haha.

I actually already replaced pretty much all of Cloud's data with Aerith: His battle model, limits (also kill count and use count), base stat and stat growth, menu portrait, default weapon and equippable weapons. I only haven't replaced his minigame models, world map models, and dialogue (I'm not a good storywriter so the most I'll do is probably change "he" to "she" hahaha). I also didn't replace him on the wonder square basketball screen cause it'd make the basketball game impossible without his initial animation. Oh and also closeups scene such as Jessie explaining about the reactors and train route, also Tifa and Cloud's flashback about the promise (this scene has a closeup of Tifa and Cloud for a brief dialogue then changes to their small selves. Both the brief closeup and the flashback scenes are not edited. Also the flashback on kalm is unedited as well).Haha lazy me.

Can you tell me how to replace his world map model and mini game model? I don't know if Aerith will look good on the bike one though lol.

Minigames are still a mystery. On the PSX the bike Cloud is inside MINI/H_Kawai.BIN but I do not know if such a file exists for PC. The snowboard model hasn't been located on either platform it seems to be loaded from space or something.

The PC version can have it's models edited through Kimera, but it takes a bit of work to get the dimensions right (the bike model for Cloud is probably the creepiest thing I've ever seen in my life; it has one upside down eyeball for a start). This vid shows it being done with Yuffie: http://youtu.be/5mTT0x4J7eA

Everything except the Snowboard game can be covered because, like Meesbaker said, the models for that appear to be loaded from some trans-dimensional portal beyond mortal ken. I'm about to head out just now, but I can upload my notes on the minigame models (if they're coherent, I haven't looked at them in months) when I get back.

The worldmap is split in parts but the model that is loaded is always the same one. There is none for Aeris but you can simply replace the model of Cloud and standard animations. Of course some worldmap animations like chocobo will not work properly but who cares. If you do you can also just copy Aeris body parts over Cloud's skeleton in kimera.

On PSX we have a WORLD folder, is there no such thing on PC? The model should be easy to find.

To swap directly, all you have to do is grab AUFF.hrc (and it's constituent parts) and put them into the decompiled world_us.lgp (ULgp is a good tool for it). Then delete BBE.hrc and rename AUFF.hrc to BBE.hrc instead; that should change the model. You then need to replace Cloud's anims with ones compatible with Aeris (idle, walking, running, etc.). Same deal, just put the Aeris one in, delete the old one, then rename the Aeris anim to the deleted file's name. There's no choco one though, so you might need to make a concession there for now.

Oh so that's how! Wow I didn't know that.. I must've not done enough research.. Thank you so much again Sega!

Lol about the chocobo.. I'm trying to replace the mounting and dismounting animation with Aerith's jump animation lmao. If it looks too ridiculous, maybe I'll use climbing animation xD. The riding both the idle and run I use Aerith's sitting animation. I have no way of testing it at this moment since I'm past Mythril Mines I'd have to fight Midgar Zolom if I want to test it.. Well first the most important thing is Aerith appeared on the world map correctly. Thanks again for that!

..well I happened to have a save data outside Kalm and tested it. Haha the result is quite funny. But if Aerith's sitting animation can be "raised up" maybe it'll look right.. Now Aerith is sitting under the chocobo..

OMG I just realized Aerith is massaging the chocobo's leg!! Lmao I'll screenshot this and post it soon!

You can always test anything. Use Blackchocobo to edit your save file to your liking. You can drop your character in any field such as calm or chocobo farm or you can raise your stats to defeat the zolom. It is also possible to just run over the swamp without fighting the zolom. Saving and reloading helps with this as the zolom's position is not stored in the save file

The thing about the mounting, riding, dismount animations is that Cloud's model actually moves upward so it's off the ground to off-set the Chocobo's height. For a lot of animations, the character is always on the ground so they'll appear under the Chocobo in most cases (this even includes jumping, which has it's motion handled by off-sets handled by coords set in field script rather than the animation itself).

I think the only decent solution as far as Aeris goes is to open up a default world_us.lgp and load Cloud with these animations in Kimera, then take a note of the x, y, z position of every single body part during every frame of animation and then using this info to create one for Aeris (maybe giving the additional bone she uses for the hair the same coords as the head). I'm not sure how much time that would take for all four animations, but it won't be quick; might not even be a realistic option.